1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a light source unit and an image display unit, and in particular, to a light source unit for displaying an image by using laser light modulated in response to an image signal, and a technique of an image display unit that uses the light source unit.
2. Related Art
Image display units that display images using laser light have been proposed in recent years. The image display units that use laser light include front projectors and rear projectors. Laser light is suitable for bright images with high color-reproducibility owing to its high monochromaticity and directivity. For displaying of color images with laser light, for example, a red laser light (hereinafter, referred to as an R-light), a green laser light (hereinafter, referred to as a G-light), and a blue laser light (hereinafter, referred to as a B-light) are applied. A scanning optical system can be simplified by application of the color lights with the same mirror rather than with respective mirrors for the color lights. When mirrors are provided for individual color lights, the mirrors must be driven in synchronism. Accordingly, the use of the same mirror for all the color lights can simplify the control of the mirror. An example of the technique of applying a plurality of laser lights is disclosed in JP-A-2003-21800.
When positions to be scanned with color laser lights are apart from one another on the region to be scanned with laser light, the spaces among the color lights may be recognized as the seam of images. This may also make it difficult to apply the laser lights to an exact position according to an image signal. Accordingly, it is considered desirable that laser light be close to one another on the region to be scanned with laser light to have substantially the same space as the pitch of pixels, for example. However, this produces the problem of difficulty in providing the laser lights at substantially the same spaces as the pitch of pixels.